During times of national tragedy, or during a family emergency, knowing about the safety and location of family members and close friends can be very important. Talking to family members, or even just hearing their voices, can provide comfort in those anxious times. Since emergency situations may occur at any time, it is likely that family members may be scattered in different locations making it hard for them to communicate with each other. For example, at the time of an emergency, parents may be away from home, e.g., at work, while the children are off visiting friends. No one may be at home at the family residence, e.g., house, to answer calls and relay information.
Various call forwarding services are available that can forward calls from one location, e.g., a family residence, to another location where a person is temporally located. Such forwarding services may include a call screening feature which limits call forwarding, e.g., to calls from telephone numbers on a subscriber provided list or who have provided a particular personal identification number (PIN). Such call forwarding services normally are enabled/disabled by the subscriber.
Such known call forwarding services fail to provide a way for connecting multiple, e.g., 3 or more, family members at different locations together in a single call. Such conference calls are particularly desirable in times of emergency where several, e.g., 3 or more, family members may want to share information.
Wireless telephones offer one method for contacting individual family members when they are away from home. Unfortunately, during times of emergency, e.g., national disaster, mobile phones suffer from several limitations. For example, during a disaster there tends to be a flood of wireless calls to/from the region where the disaster occurred. This creates service availability issues, e.g., wireless calls may not go through due to congestion of the wireless telephone networks. Physical destruction of wireless telephone transmitters in a disaster region may also present problems when attempting to contact family members via wireless phone in a disaster area. Accordingly, it may not be possible to contact individual family members via wireless phone during a disaster.
Even when a family member can be contacted by wireless phone, it is often not easy to conference in other family members as part of a multi-call telephone conference. Accordingly, even when an individual family member can be reached by wireless phone, it can often be difficult to quickly disseminate the information about the individual's status to all family members.
E-mail offers an alternative means of communicating during an emergency. While E-mail is becoming more common, it is still rare for every member of a family to have ready access to E-mail, particularly when away from home. Many E-mail users still rely on dial-up connections to access their E-mail. Such E-mail users may be reluctant to tie up their telephone lines during emergencies in fear of missing a call from a loved one. However, for users of mobile E-mail devices, e.g., personal data assistants (PDAs) and notebook computers with wireless E-mail capability, E-mail presents a useful way of exchanging at least some limited information during an emergency.
In the uncertain world of modern times, there is a need for a way of establishing communications between multiple family members during times of an emergency or disaster. Accordingly, there is a need for methods whereby family members who are away from home can easily exchange information with one another. It is desirable that any such method not be dependent on the need for an individual to have or use a mobile phone. It is also desirable that any such methods not be dependent on the ability of family members to transmit and/or receive E-mails. While it is desirable that an emergency communications service not be dependent on mobile telephone and/or E-mail use, when available it would be beneficial if such communications methods could be used to exchange at least a limited amount of information.
From a practical standpoint, it is desirable that a method of allowing family members to communicate with one another in an emergency be capable of being implemented whether or not one or more family members are at home at the time of the emergency situation. It is also desirable that the communication method allow and/or provide for telephone conference calls between multiple family members so that a large number of family members can obtain information about the other members at the same time.
Accordingly, there is a need for new methods and apparatus that can be used to allow members of a family or other group of people to communicate with one another during times of national, family or other types of emergencies.